Lack of wholesome social life for young people. Lack of recreation and organized play. Morality and the play spirit. B. The New Cooperation in Country Communities I. _Social Cooperation_ The problem of community socialization. Who shall take the initiative? A community plan for socialization. The gospel of organized play. The school a social center. The social influence of the Grange. II. _Business Cooperation_ Modern rural cooperative movements. Cooperation among fruit growers. Some elements of success and failure. Our debt to immigrants. Cooperative success in Denmark. [_Cooperation of religious forces will be treated in Chap. VII._] CHAPTER V RURAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION A. COUNTRY LIFE DEFICIENCIES I. Social Diagnosis: Rural Individualism. The preceding chapters have emphasized the riches of country life sufficiently to save the author from the charge of pessimism. Let us hold fast to our rural optimism. We shall need it all. But let it not blind us to the unfortunate facts in rural life, for diagnosis is the first step toward recovery. We are to notice now some of the fundamental social deficiencies which are almost universal in our American rural society. Dr. Butterfield calls the American farmer "a rampant individualist!" Independence has been his national boast and his personal glory. Pioneer life developing heroic virtues in his personality has made him as a class perhaps the most self-reliant in history. The ownership of land always gives a man the feeling of independence. Let the world spin,--his broad acres will support him and his family. If one crop fail, another will succeed, though the weather act its worst. American farms average perhaps the largest in the world, nearly one-fourth of a square mile. Hence the distance between farm homes, and the habit of social independence which is bred by isolation. "Every man for himself; look out for number one" is the natural philosophy of life under such conditions. Self-protection and aggrandizement, jealousy of personal rights, slowness to accept advice, proneness to law suits over property, thrifty frugality to a fault, indifference to public opinion, disregard of even the opinions of experts,--all are very characteristic of people of such independence of life. They seldom yield to argument. They do not easily respond to leadership. They are likely to view strangers with suspicion. Self-reliance overdeveloped leads them to distrust any initiative but their own. Hence they do not readily work with other people. They refuse to recognize superiority in others of their own class. All of which results in a most serious social weakness; _failure in cooperation_, a fatal failure in any society. Positively, this explains the jealousies and feuds so common in rural neighborhoods. Negatively, it accounts for the lack of effective social organization.